A counselor's ideas and insights about sex and relationships in college

Main menu

Post navigation

Do You Think My Ex Misses Me?

Do you ever wonder if your ex thinks about you? If they broke up with you, you might assume that they are moving on pain-free. If you were dating a heartless and selfish person, this may be true. You may think they are being heartless and selfish, but most of the time there are good reasons for a break up. It just can be hard to feel that way. Trust me, your ex isn’t escaping without any pain. They are probably still thinking about you more than you realize.

However, that unfortunately doesn’t mean they want to get back together with you. So, why are they still thinking about you if they don’t want to be in a relationship any more? The sad truth is that life is complicated. In some cases your ex may have broken up with you because they were scared of how close you were becoming. They weren’t ready for that type of commitment. In those cases is really is about them and not you. Fear is a powerful emotion that make people do irrational things. This will make you want to reason with them, however you can’t reason with their fear or make them ready to face it either. The more you push, the more they will dig their heels in and resist. The best thing you can do is try to move on. If they are running from you, the best thing to do is give them their space. If they decide to conquer their fear of commitment or intimacy, they’ll come find you. At that point you can decide if you want to give them another chance.

In other cases, your ex realized that something about the two of you wasn’t adding up. Something was missing. It isn’t because you aren’t good enough. The rejection may make you feel this way, but the reality is that it is hard to find all the right connections in a relationship. Sometimes you may connect really well emotionally, but be missing that sexual spark. Other times you may have a really cool intellectual connection, but don’t have any recreational interests in common. Different things are going to be more important to different people as well. Some people can live without having a lot of common interests as long as their values are the same and the sexual spark is there. However, not everyone feels or thinks the same.

Your ex may have needed more from a committed relationship. There will be moments when they doubt their decision, but at the end of the day they know they need more than you are able to give. That doesn’t mean they won’t miss the connections you did have whether it be your friendship, the sex or going to the movies with you. It is just that the piece missing from your relationship was too important for them to give up. I know this won’t help, but it isn’t your fault. You have to be you. Trying to be someone just to make your ex happy won’t work in the long run. In time you’ll find that it is much better to be with someone you can be yourself around and know that it is enough.

Another case is your ex realizing you can’t make each other happy. It is not about asking too much, it is about asking too much of this specific person you are with. Your relationship may be good overall, but an underlying conflict keeps surfacing. This can cause your ex to finally decide to move on. For an example, it can be a problem if you are someone who values consistency, yet your boyfriend or girlfriend is someone who lives in the moment. You may have a great sexual spark, be able to talk for hours, and enjoy spending time together, but if you make plans that your boyfriend or girlfriend always forgets or cancels the last minute, it can make things hard. You may feel like they aren’t valuing your time and they feel like you are always lecturing them about it. At the end of the day, some couples realize they won’t be able to compromise on an issue, and it tends to ruin everything else in the relationship.

Is it too much to ask for someone to be consistent? No, but it may be too much to ask of your ex. They may not be able to bend enough to make you happy. It may bring them to the breaking point and they finally call it quits. This will be painful for both of you. Even though they broke up with you, they will still miss you. They will have doubts. This type of relationship may actually go through several break ups before it is finally over because there is a lot of good aspects. Not to mention the relationships they developed with your friend’s and family. It is usually not easy to follow through with a break up. This is why your ex may end up texting you after a few weeks or still want to be friends. It is painful on both sides. However, one issue can become a major conflict. If the resentment builds, it can be hard to overcome, and the overall happiness in the relationship dies.

The hardest part is convincing yourself not to beg. You may want to text them and try to convince them why they were wrong to break up with you. You may feel if they only knew how much you miss them and wanted them back, it would convince them to give you another chance. You may want to convince them you can change. What I know is this…begging and stalking never made anyone look good. Try to fight your instinct to reach out to them to tell them one last time how much you still love them. This will not make you more attractive in their eyes. It may weaken their resolve momentarily. You may get a conversation, a meeting, or even sex out of your efforts. Remember, I’m telling you they do still miss you. However, it won’t last and then you’ll be going through the pain of losing them all over again.

The point of this post is to remind you that you aren’t a loser. Your ex didn’t break up with you because there is something wrong with you. (If you did do something wrong, then work to fix that mistake whether they come back or not. Some mistakes can’t be fixed within your relationship. All you can do is hope to correct that mistake with someone else in the future.) Most of the time there was something wrong BETWEEN the two of you. That means there are things your ex will miss about you. You may not be ready to think about finding someone else yet, but don’t bash yourself too hard while you’re grieving this break up. The reason your ex broke up with you may not be an issue for someone else, so don’t go changing yourself for someone who has already closed the door in your face. After you feel a little better, you will realize there are a lot of other open doors with people behind them who will be able to love you for you.

Post navigation

7 comments on “Do You Think My Ex Misses Me?”

This is such a good post! It can be so common for women to obsess about this issue (I don’t see this so much in my male clients). I have often thought that this behavior – obsessing about the other person, is a way that people avoid their own pain. When people are overly focused on how the other person is feeling or what they are doing, it is often at the expense of really dealing with their own hurt and loss.

I also think there is another reason – people often have great difficulty with validating their own feelings and experience. Often girls will worry that if their ex doesn’t seem to be messed up because of the break-up that the relationship was a lie, that he/she never really cared about them, etc. Despite my explanation that everyone deals with grief, loss, pain differently, what girls want is validation from him/her and him/her only. I work very hard at helping girls self-validate around this issue and to trust their truth, but it often falls on deaf ears.

The hard truth may be that your ex doesn’t technically owe you anything. It would be nice and kind of them to engage in some kind of process with you around the breakup, but that doesn’t and can’t always happen (particularly if he/she is with someone else or feeling relief and content with their decision to leave). If your ex is unavailable to you and won’t answer your questions, the only choice is to trust yourself and your truth – that the relationship mattered and that he/she cared about you, at one time. He/she may not love you or want to be with you anymore (but may want to have sex with you, which is very confusing), but he/she, more than likely, did care at one time.